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Okay… is it just me? Because I just saw “Into the Wild Green Yonder” and thought it was very “meh”. Certainly nothing I would buy for 20 bucks. The jokes were tired, the plot was convoluted. However, because I felt this, I was told “You are not true Futurama fan, then.”

I absolutely loved the series, but with the exception of “Bender's Big Score” which I thought was decent, I have been really disappointed with the post-cancellation movies. It just seems to me that they should be more clever, since production takes so long. The writing now is lazy, IMO.

I haven't thought any of the movies were as great as most of the original episodes. But since Futurama is probably my #2 all-time favorite television show, it goes without sayin' I ate 'em up anyway. ;)

I adore Futurama but I agree that the movies are not up to the same level as the episodes.

However, I'm used to the episodes being crammed full of stuff in their 22 minutes. The plots were fairly complex for the time frame and there was some sort of joke every 10 seconds or so. When I rewatch the first 6-8 shows, those episodes seem very slow in comparison to the later ones. If the movies were as full as the eps, I think they would have been overwhelming. I do wish the writers had sped things up a little though- it's nice they have room, but I don't think the movie's plots were any more complex than an episode plot (there were just more of them) and the humor didn't seem as snappy. I think they used a punchline twice in two of the movies…

I thought the first 2 were pretty good- 2 or 3 main plot threads which mostly coincided, linkage to the shows, and funny enough if a bit slow paced. I really dislike the third one, which was way too much geekery (and on a very tired subject, parody fantasy, although the dark matter stuff was good)… haven't seen the 4th one yet but I'm optimistic anyway. So I'm not a huge fan of the movies, but I still love seeing new material, and appearances from my favorite characters like robot devil.

I'm not sure if they actually did have as much time as we think they did. There was a lot of time from the end of the series to the first movie, but I don't think they would have been writing then. They probably got the go ahead fairly late, wrote the movies as fast as possible to start getting them into production, and got back to other things. The writer's strike may have interfered with that too? I do all know they were written at the same time and the delay between movies has just been for the animation work.

More or less agreeing with what Skool said, I think these movies would have done better cut into three or four new episodes apiece.

I mean, it's the exact same thing that happened with Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Fifteen minute stories are hilarious. Put that same kind of writing into an hour and a half and you have an airplane crashing into a train wreck as it flies off a cliff and sinks an oil tanker.

God needed the Devil, the Beatles needed the Rolling Stones, Hakoshen needs me.I'm the enemy he requires to define him.Soon or later, he'll bring me back to life again for another epic encounter of shouting about power levels and grimacing.-Harkovast

As a Futurama fan I was thrilled to get the movies and bought every single one of them. To me, Bender's Big Score earned about 11 out of 10 in my book. It's the one I'll watch over and over again. So naturally, none of the movies that followed lived up to it and might have seemed like it letdown if it wasn't for the fact that I'm getting more Futurama. And honestly? I like any one of those movies better than some of the lamer episodes. Futurama had some award-worthy episodes, and yet had some real stinkers, too. But even the stinkers were better than the best Simpsons episode in the last ten years.

Bottom line for me? The movies were a great thing to get when the alternative is nothing. And they certainly could have been a lot worse. I'm happy to have them in my collection.

I'll agree with the sentiment that they would have been better as smaller, separate episodes. I think the writers are better suited to episodes and their length, so these movies didn't quite get the right pacing and amount of humor. I know that as I watched some of the movies I remembered thinking, “Wow, this is long.” (not that I wasn't enjoying it)

Product PlacementSo I take if from you guys that the general consent is: Futurama doesn't work in feature length.

The first movie was great, but overall yes. The style doesn't lend itself well to a solid feature length.

God needed the Devil, the Beatles needed the Rolling Stones, Hakoshen needs me.I'm the enemy he requires to define him.Soon or later, he'll bring me back to life again for another epic encounter of shouting about power levels and grimacing.-Harkovast

Well, I wouldn't say it's impossible to have a good feature-length Futurama movie. Heck, “Bender's Big Score” would do that for me. But I think the deal is that the writers have to have “feature length” in mind, and write it accordingly.

With these DVDs they knew in advance that they'd be chopped into episode length and aired on Comedy Central as episodes. You can see its effect, as with some of the movies they almost have “acts”, or the focus and theme change about every half hour. I think Futurama's writers could easily manage a good movie if they had none of those extra constraints to worry about. There's nothing about the Futurama premise, characters, or jokes that would not allow you to enjoy them for more than a half hour.

Now, am I really hearing people in this thread correctly? Were these past DVDs really that hard to sit through? Though they had varying degrees of quality, I liked each one of them. Not once did I finish a movie and think, “I could have better spent my time doing something else.”

HawkNow, am I really hearing people in this thread correctly? Were these past DVDs really that hard to sit through? Though they had varying degrees of quality, I liked each one of them. Not once did I finish a movie and think, “I could have better spent my time doing something else.”

Yes. I found the last one (“Into the Wild Green Yonder” )hard to sit through. It really had no redeeming value for me at all.